6
Behind him was the giant insect cage, packed with flies. A pool of the black dragon’s blood, which had splattered inside the room, spread farther. Standing amid the gruesome spectacles she herself had brought about and trampling all over Crusch was the small girl—no, the Archbishop of Lust.
A fang-like tooth poked out of Capella Emerada Lugunica’s mouth as she continued to laugh.
“Wha-what the hell is this…?!”
“It’s pointless for meatbags like you to even think about it! Ain’t the best thing just accepting the facts in front of your own eyes? A beautiful girl trembles and quakes before you, but behold! She is actually an Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins!”
Subaru was unable to hide his inner turmoil as Capella danced before him, sticking her tongue out in a vulgar fashion. Crusch had fallen at Capella’s feet, and her eyes had rolled back. Her convulsions were a dangerous sign of her current condition.
No noticeable external wounds caught his eye, and he didn’t know exactly what had happened to her. But those were grave symptoms. If he didn’t get her out of here immediately, it would soon be too late.
“Your heads aren’t much for thinking to begin with, are they? In this situation, why would there be a little morsel of meat just sitting around here at city hall? How you can even live with that stupid, moronic Ahh, a girl’s in trouble—I have to save her mindset is beyond me!”
“Sh-shut it. There’s all kinds of things I wanna ask you right now…but first, get your feet off her.”
“Huh? Aren’t you so glad to see my bare feet that you’re breaking out in a sweat? Or do you have an obsession with the slab of meat currently savoring the soles of my feet? I do have such an erotic body, after all. You just can’t get enough of me, can you? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
“!! She’s not someone a person like you should be stepping on!!”
Capella stepped on Crusch’s chest, grinding her heel in. With her acts of casual violence and mocking laughter driving him past the boiling point, Subaru’s emotions raged as he rose off the ground, whip at the ready.
“Ohh?”
Raising a voice feigning ignorance, Capella opened her eyes wide as she watched Subaru move.
Subaru swung his whip, aiming not at Capella, but at a piece of the rubble that was a by-product of Crusch’s fight with the black dragon. Subaru deftly entwined his whip around a handful of stones, twisting his wrist to launch them at Capella’s head.
“ ”
Not knowing his enemy’s means of attack, close combat would be the height of idiocy. In the first place, Subaru lacked the power to directly engage an Archbishop in combat. Even though the blood was rushing to his head, he was still painfully aware of his own powerlessness.
That was why Subaru needed to prioritize not the annihilation of his foe, but finding a way out of this situation.
—He needed to recover Crusch, get away from this place, and link up with one of his comrades.
The debris that he hurled had more than enough mass to cave in an unprotected human skull. Whether his impromptu projectile was blocked or evaded, he couldn’t get Crusch up and moving while she was still firmly under that girl’s feet.
So his plan was to create an opening to collect Crusch and then—
“Come on, hit!”
“Fine by meee.”
“?!”
When Subaru shouted to rouse himself, Capella shot back with a calm and measured reply.
Immediately after, he heard the sound of something hard breaking flesh and bone. Then blood began pouring from Capella’s head as it snapped back.
Struck on the defenseless side of her skull, the girl had her forehead torn open; her blond hair was stained a dark crimson. The girl’s face, lovely and sweet, was cruelly crushed and deformed as he watched on.
“—Uuugh.”
Having the left eye from that half-smashed face stare at him was a startling sight that unexpectedly seized Subaru’s heart. He’d only meant to create an opening. He’d just done what some might have called the most foolish thing possible.
“Why do you all hate dancing in the palm of my lovely hand this much? I just adore how you’re all such hopeless idiots. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
“—Grrraaahhh!”
The instant his thoughts froze, Capella’s mocking laugh and a black whirlwind slammed into Subaru from the side and sent him flying.
Struck on the entire right side of his body, as if he’d been slapped by the hand of a giant, Subaru skipped across the floor, taking a desk in the room with him as he tumbled away. Completely battered and beaten up, Subaru came to a stop when he bumped into the far wall. Coughing, he lifted his head, wondering what had happened. That was when he saw—
“Bwa-ha, what’s with the face? Am I so beautiful that your voice won’t come out?”
“…What…are those?”
“Mmm? Ah, you mean these. Well, well, well. I wonder what they look like to a meatbag like you?”
When Subaru forgot his pain, his voice barely coming out, Capella turned her back to him and amusedly waved her butt back and forth.
There was something strange jutting out from the shapely behind she thrust out toward him, something that did not belong. This was a black, thick reptile’s— No, it was a dragon’s tail. A dragon’s tail protruded from her backside.
Having reached that conclusion, he belatedly realized that it must have been that tail that had hit him earlier.
“Don’t tell me you’re a…dragon taking human form?”
“Yes, there it is. The irrational argument that you can’t help spouting because of your low brain capacity and a total lack of critical thinking! I’ve been so kind to sprinkle these breadcrumb clues, but it turns out scum like you need a good kick to see the whole picture!”
Her mood souring from Subaru’s apparently incorrect deduction, Capella swung at him with her huge tail once more. Instantly evading with a quick jump to the side, Subaru watched as she crashed her long tail into the floor and created cracks. Then he took a breath of—
“Letting your guard down at this point just makes all your other effort pointless!”
“—Gah!”
A huge fist slammed into Subaru’s wide-open face without warning. When he rebounded off the floor from the force of the impact, he was then launched into the ceiling by the tail, which had been waiting for him. His body collided with the ceiling then, and as he helplessly spun and fell, countless bladelike feathers tore him up on the way down, scattering droplets of blood all over.
“Gngh, gaaaaah!!”
A painful cry escaped his throat as his back was slashed and gouged. When Subaru hit the floor again, he desperately tried to get his mind working again. He’d just been slugged, thrown, and cut up—what did that mean?
Subaru’s face had been punched with the massive arm of a beast. He’d been tossed into the air by the black-dragon tail, and he’d been sliced open by sharp, bladelike bird feathers—and all these had spawned from the body of the girl, who was looking down at Subaru as he wheezed in pain.
“Shouldn’t you be able to figure out the answer by now?”
A huge bestial arm, a black dragon’s tail, a monstrous bird’s wings. Each could only be described as grotesque.
As he set his eyes upon her form, no other words could come to mind. If something came to mind other than words, it was physiological disgust at encountering an unnatural being that shouldn’t exist.
She was a grotesque monster, a fiend, et cetera. Her true nature was—
“Transmutation, transformation…!”
“Bwa-ha!”
For the first time, Subaru’s muted reply drew a laugh of genuine satisfaction from Capella.
“I am the Archbishop of Lust, Capella Emerada Lugunica— I exist to monopolize all this world’s love and admiration for myself. I, the one who deserves to be loved the most, can answer anyone’s perverse desires. I am the ultimate manifestation of any aesthetic that exists. I can even transform into a beautiful girl according to your tastes. I am a devoted woman, after all! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!”
As she said whatever she pleased, Capella freely altered her form in front of Subaru.
She shifted from her grotesque form to that of a rustic-looking boy, then immediately lengthened her limbs and turned into a voluptuous femme fatale. In what seemed to be the blink of an eye, she changed again, becoming the apparent epitome of an unfortunate village girl, and an instant later, she took the form of a very young girl, an obscene smile rising to her cherubic face.
“See? So which me do you like the most?”
“ ”
He was speechless. Words refused to form. All his heart comprehended was that this was the worst thing possible.
Her morals were seemingly nonexistent. Though a plain and simple ability, Lust’s Authority allowed her to violate and trample upon anyone’s system of values. It specialized in putting herself on display.
When he looked, the terrible wound that had been caused by the hurled debris was already closed, and there was no sign she was ever hurt. Perhaps she had covered up the scar with her incredible regenerative ability or used her transformation ability instead.
Either way, he’d uncovered the trick behind the black dragon and the little girl, the two forms Capella had taken. At first, he’d suspected she had a Petelgeuse-like ability to possess others, but—
—If this was the case, the whole incident with the black dragon getting blown outside city hall through a window didn’t make much sense.
“The fact that it did nothing except breathe fire should’ve been an obvious clue. Also, setting aside that I left the lizard in the exact spot you’d expect a trap to be, where’d all your doubts go when it didn’t immediately move to respond to your intrusion and it didn’t speak with my beaaaautiful voice?”
“…Wait… Waitwaitwait, wait up a second.”
Reading Subaru’s thoughts from the minute changes in his facial expression, Capella cackled with contempt.
Her form became that of a graceful woman with long, swaying hair, then a gentleman with a crimson mustache and beard; even the tenor of her voice changed, leaving him questioning whom he was talking with.
But the instant that misgiving spawned inside his chest, it led to an appropriate, logically consistent deduction that refused to vanish.
If Capella’s Authority of Lust allowed her to freely transmute and transform—then what if this wasn’t limited to her body alone and could be used on others as well?
“Even with your head and its limited blood flow, you should understand where that lizard and those flies really came from, right?”
Touching a hand to her mouth, Capella acted like a malevolent stage performer as she pressed Subaru for an answer.
Aware that he was forcibly following her script, Subaru replied, his teeth shaking at their roots.
This most awful, most terrible, most wretched of nightmares was—
“—All of them are people in city hall who were transformed by you?”
“Yes, that’s correct. But you’re too slow, so no prize! You’re a slow, clumsy bag of meat, and whatever purpose you exist for, shockingly, is beyond even my understanding!”
“You can’t…understand? —That’s what I want to say to you, goddamn it!!”
Capella had confessed to her cruel, monstrous actions with an expression that didn’t have the barest pangs of conscience.
In the dimly lit room, the multifaceted eyes glowed red and stared at Subaru as one. They flapped wings that they could not use to fly, desperately broadcasting that incessant sound.
Probably because they were crying for help.
“I don’t get it! Turning people into…into flies? What’s the meaning of that?!”
“Are you saying it’s repulsive?”
“It makes every hair on my body stand up! You…! You people are just…!”
“Well, can’t be helped if it makes you feel bad. You can’t avoid feeling disgusted—is that what you’re saying?”
“!!”
There were no longer words that could accurately describe what Subaru felt.
Changing people into flies, toying with their lives—it was far worse than merely killing them. It was the worst. It was the lowest.
In a span of a few hours, Subaru had met four Archbishops whom he would never be able to coexist with even if he had a whole eternity.
Sirius of Wrath toyed with other people’s emotions and was a madwoman obsessed with her own self-centered love.
Regulus of Greed forced his own values onto others and was a villain who placed himself above all others.
Alphard of Gluttony was a blasphemer who stole the names and memories of people, trampling upon the proof of their very existence.
And Capella of Lust was a monster who spat upon and blotted out the values revered by ordinary human beings.
Each and every one was accursed, beyond saving, and stark raving mad.
The gap between him and them absolutely could not be filled. That conclusion alone made Subaru’s vision go red. However, Capella gazed upon Subaru’s anguished expression of righteous indignation as she continued:
“—Yes. You hate what you find repulsive, what makes you feel bad. So what of it?”
She smiled, as if there was nothing that could make her happier.
“ ”
He didn’t understand what she was getting at. He didn’t have the means to understand it to begin with. They might as well have been the words of an alien from outer space.
He couldn’t understand. Her values and her very way of life were just too different.
“When you saw all these stupidly huge flies, you felt an instinctive revulsion. You thought it was disgusting. Well, you’re right. No one could love creatures like that. It’d be unnatural.”
She continued changing her form left and right, talking in a jumble of voices as she kept altering her speech alongside her rapidly shifting appearance.
“They’re ugly and creepy to anyone’s eyes. I changed those piece-of-trash meatbags into filthy insects that are too pitiful to even look at. You can’t love any of them, either. Of course you can’t.”
The monster before him had pitch-black eyes, eyes that saw nothing, eyes filled with bottomless darkness.
“People are creatures who can’t live without loving someone. But since they’re creatures who can’t love something that’s strange or revolting, then by process of elimination, they can’t live without loving something they can love.”
Capella spoke with a passionate voice, almost as if she was speaking about how ordinary lovers fell in love.
“ ”
Subaru’s mind had gone blank. He could not understand the confession of the monster tilting her head, acting like she had made the greatest discovery of the modern age.
He wanted to get away that very moment. He didn’t want to breathe the same air as her for a single second longer. He didn’t want to be anywhere he could see her. He didn’t want to feel her on his skin. He didn’t want to hear her voice.
—After all, this monster loved Subaru Natsuki.
It wasn’t just Subaru. The victim she turned into a black dragon, the great many people she turned into flies, Crusch, whom she was even now trampling underfoot, Julius fighting above them, Garfiel, Wilhelm, and Ricardo, and the giant and the woman they were fighting in the square, all the people in the city—she loved…all of them.
It was because she loved them that she did everything she could think of to make them love her. To this monster, that was simply how love worked.
“So you see, I am kind and deeply compassionate, and I am simply a woman drowning in the love of the many. I monopolize all the love and admiration in the world for myself, but that means I can’t slack off in my efforts to be loved, you see. To be loved by you, I’ll turn into whatever version of me best suits your tastes. To make you look at me, I’ll rob you of all interest in anything else. I don’t mind if you loved someone else to begin with. After all, this is the end for you. You’ll come to love me. I’m giving it my all to make sure you do, see? My personal charm only goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up! The charm of the meatbags who aren’t me only goes down and down and down and down and down and down and down!”
“…Just…kill me now.”
“Hah? Why? I’m all about making people love me. I wouldn’t even dream of doing something so barbaric. Even if you’re a completely useless sack of meat, you have value so long as your love is focused on me… My desire for recognition is just a tiiiny bit stronger than most people’s. That’s why I want even one more person to tell me one more word of affection and to love me for even one more second. Get it? That’s all I’m asking.”
.
, , .
, , , , .
“Got it.”
“Ohh, you finally came around? Well then, put your love for me into words, dissolve in love right there, and turn into a mass of flesh to my liking…”
“Die.”
Lacking the luxury of free thought, Subaru wished only for the death of the monster standing before him.
This was his enemy. He didn’t want or need any more information.
He swung his whip, slamming it at his feet. Taken aback, the monster instantly backed away, finally freeing Crusch. Subaru crouched down and picked her up.
How many times had he done that today? Her light body secure in his arms, he immediately leaped away.
Realizing what had just happened, Capella’s eyes filled with powerful, all-consuming hatred.
“So in the end, you’re just a male piece of meat that’s obsessed with female meat, huh? Don’t even bother denying it. You can put whatever pretty spin on it you want. Ohh, you love a girl because she’s pretty. Oh, you love a girl because she’s cute. You love soft things that make you feel good, don’t you? Don’t get all high-and-mighty with me!!”
“Whoooa?!”
Glaring at Subaru as he drew away, Capella let spittle fly as she reached out with both arms.
One arm transformed and grew a serpent’s head while the other formed a lion’s head— The grotesque limbs stretched out to chase Subaru, weaving through the room to sink their fangs into him and tear him apart.
His right leg was bleeding again. He didn’t feel any pain, and at this point, he sincerely didn’t care if it tore off in the process. Putting the entirety of his soul into protecting the warmth cradled within his arms, Subaru focused all his athletic ability into evading Capella’s pursuit.
“Is that breeding mare really that important to you?! Then you’d better hang on to her tight in the next life, hugging her and never letting go! That body of a filthy temptress! Those eyes that invite sympathy! Those lips whispering sweet nothings! That nice-feeling fleshy flesh-flesh! You just can’t get enough! That’s why you’re trying so hard, right?!”
“! You ass, stop putting words in my mouth! That’s not how it is between me and her!”
“Oh, shut up! There’s a heady, female scent coming from that female meat! That goes the same for the male scent coming from your male meat! Did it really never come to mind? Can you swear you haven’t had even one indecent thought for just one second? If you have, even for a second, that means you’re just a male slab of meat desperately searching for a female slab of meat! How am I wrong?! Just try telling me how I’m wrong!”
A serpent’s fangs, a lion’s maw, a dragon’s tail, enormous bestial arms, and monstrous bird feathers were tearing the room apart.
Letting out an anguished cry, Subaru searched for the remotest chance for victory in that raging storm of destruction. Even if he tried to escape, Capella was barring the room’s entrance. Her form was in flux, swelling and contracting and constantly shifting between woman, girl, boy, and elder, creating an anomaly so ugly that it scarcely seemed real.
“You haven’t stroked her hair? You haven’t touched her lips? You haven’t embraced her body? Haven’t you adorned those tawdry, sweaty thoughts of yours with that pretty word—love? Give me a break. You’re just mistaking love for something else. You all just went off on your own, smugly dressing up carnal desires with such flowery words and phrases.”
There was a glower of madness in Capella’s eyes as she stared at Subaru, transforming into her most repulsive form yet.
Her hair was long and silver, glistening in the moonlight. Her eyes were violet, like encrusted gemstones. Her skin was white, reminiscent of powder snow. Her limbs were long and slender, her body amply curved. Some fine details were different, but what appeared there was—
“You just don’t wanna be open about all your carnal passions out in public! Don’t go dressing them up with words like love. How about it? How’s this, how’s this? This is how hard I’m working to be loved by you! Look at this! Can you still speak? Do you still have something to say? Tell me your promised, inevitable denial!”
Taking the form of a beautiful silver-haired girl, the monster howled as it made a face that she would never, ever have made. Subaru finally opened his mouth.
“—I love her because I was attracted to her heart! I was attracted to her nobility, her gentleness, her compassion, her open mind, her smiling face when she looks at the sky, her devoted way of life, her stubborn refusal to brook any unfairness, her affectionate eyes, her gaze that tickles my heart, her lips that whisper love, her hands that warm mine, her touch that makes my heart beat faster, and her beautiful hair that flutters in the wind! I believe with all my heart that we were destined to be together. Because she was the only one who acknowledged me. Because she was the one who stayed by my side when things were hard. Because she was the one who taught me what was truly important. Because we’ve always, always been together. Because I want to live the rest of my life seeing and feeling the same things as her. Because we promised. Because I’ll never forget that promise. Because she knows the version of me that I can’t show to anyone else. Because she’s the only one who knows the real me. Because she’s the one whose eyes I’ll never be able to fool. Because she knows how deep my loneliness goes. Because she’s the one who lets me forget my bitter memories. Because she’s the one who taught me how to love. Because you were the one wiping the tears I cried. Because you found me in the middle of everything else that was happening. Because I can’t live without you. Because you’re everything to me. Because you make my chest run hot. Because when you’re around, all the colors in the world seem brighter. Because without you, I can’t feel happiness. Because I can’t live without you anymore. Because in the middle of a life full of lies, this is the only feeling that’s real.”
Rattling off the words like he was chanting a curse, the silver-haired monster’s expression died a little with each additional phrase.
But as he spoke of what underpinned his love over and over at incredible length, Capella lifted her head, her beauty and cuteness and obscenity forming a strangely complex expression of love mixed with hatred as she shouted:
“—Those are just flowery words—every last one of them!!”
“ ”
“Don’t think you can just use words that sound nice and leave out the rest! All this stuff about what’s on the inside, blah blah, personality, blah blah, our natures are compatible, blah blah—it’s all just noise! External appearance, facial appearance—the only thing that attracts your meat to other meat is visual stimulation! If love really tied two people together, then why don’t you try dressing things up with those glimmering words, stare with those glimmering eyes, and talk about your glimmering future after your lover’s been turned into a fly?! Can you love her? Of course you can’t! It repulses you, doesn’t it?! It’s disturbing, isn’t it?! You can’t help but feel disgusted, right?! You’re the one who said that to me, loud and clear!!”
Her crazed, feral, abusive words, her persecution complex, her jealousy, her hatred, and her profound delusions were how she kept herself from falling apart.
Spraying her spittle as she ranted, Capella seemed to be losing even her tenuous grasp on her sanity, destroying more of the room as she wailed hysterically.
The great serpent hissed, the lion roared, and soon, Subaru could no longer hear Capella’s shouts.
They became a storm of noise, and the room crumbled in multiple places. Caught up in the shock wave, Subaru couldn’t figure out where to move or even where to look beyond the hovering cloud of dust particles.
Were his feet still touching the ground? Was his half-torn leg still in one piece? The only thing he was sure of was the beating heart of the woman resting in his arms. That one certainty suffused his body with courage.
But this valiant struggle suddenly came to a crashing halt.
“Meatbag, look at meeeee!”
“—Gaaah!!”
Plowing through the dust cloud, the lion head wildly charged at Subaru and sank its fangs into his leg.
His right leg was already barely hanging on, so when the lion tore into it, the limb came off at the femur and flew into the air. Exceeding the effects of Ferris’s special technique, the intense pain of losing the leg made his brain boil, and his vision went red.
He hit the ground. Crusch spilled out of his arms. He flailed around, his blood pouring out in great, big surges. Putting pressure on the wound was out of the question. His leg was gone. His lifeblood flowed out like he was a waterfall.
His near-shattered mind vaguely understood that all that red represented what little remained of Subaru Natsuki’s life.
“Haaah, my head hurts. My oh my, it seems I lost myself in a moment of arousal. How embarrassing. Bwa-ha!”
Subaru was lying faceup, the whites of his eyes showing as he weakly convulsed.
He’d managed to put his palm on the wound, but it was not up to the task of stanching the flow. But the force of the bleeding was gradually lessening. This was because all the blood in his body was draining quickly.
“Oh no—somehow, you seem to be dying. Seeing a meatbag in such agony makes the pain in a person’s heart too easy to understand. It’s too bitter a sight for me, really.”
“Ah, aah, ah—”
“The female meat will probably die, too, huh? I genuinely find that regrettable. And I wanted to try all kinds of other bodies to find out what suits your tastes— Ahh, that’s right—”
He could see nothing. He understood nothing. Something…was breathing close by…
Crouching down at Subaru’s side, the smiling monster gently put a hand on his leg wound.
“Well, I suppose I should see just what kind of unsightly mass of meat I can turn you into, huh?”
Capella held her own wrist in the air, using her opposing hand to slice it at the wrist and causing it to bleed.
The pitch-black ichor spilled out with incredible force, flowing toward the wound in Subaru’s right leg. Blood mixed with blood. Subaru’s red blood and Capella’s black blood were coming together, dissolving into each other and causing a festering scent to rise.
A moment later—
“?! Ooh, aaaghOOAO?!”
“Bwa-ha-ha!! Does it hurt? Hey, tell me, does it hurt? My blood is so much more highborn than the likes of yours. After all, it’s mixed with the blood of a dragon. It’s gonna be really something if you lose to the curse in the blood. Between you and the female meat there, I wonder who’s gonna hold on longer?”
Capella made an amused sound in her throat, but it was impossible for Subaru to reply.
In a state close to death, a point where even pain was a vague concept, he’d received a sudden shock. The black blood that had been poured onto him wriggled on top of Subaru’s wound, ever so slowly penetrating deeper into his body.
He was being overwritten by something that was not him. This was different from pain or agony. It was fear that originated from another dimension entirely— Yes, fear was the only word that fit. It was scary. Scary. Terrifying.
He didn’t understand. He wasn’t even being allowed to die.
Crusch or him, the monster had said. If so, was she undergoing the same torment as him? Subaru was just so weak, unable to do…anything.
Crusch, Beatrice, Rem, Emilia, everyone, everyone, everyone—
“Eh, iii, aaagh—”
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha!! Oh my, oh my, once again, you reject my love. That means you’ll be reborn as an unsightly pathetic piece of meat, doesn’t it? Now, it’s finally time for me to…”
Gazing adoringly as Subaru fainted in agony, Capella slowly rose to her feet.
Her form returned to that of the blond, red-eyed girl once more—whereupon Capella suddenly looked back.
There, where the glass window and the wall had been broken, a crisp breeze was blowing in—
“Heh, you’re one tough customer, aren’t you?”
“——!!!!”
Crawling up from ground level, to which it had fallen, the black dragon let out a roar upon sighting its hated foe and released a stream of black flames straight at Capella from its wide-open maw.
—The next instant, the upper floor of city hall was engulfed in pitch-black flames.
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